Narrow Road To The Deep North 48

We came to a sign at the fifth portal, the Karamon Gate. Kindly take off your shoes here and put in the furnished locker. Please take off your raincoat and don’t bring in your umbrella. Please don’t take your pets.  Please don’t take photographs from here.
It was a small entrance, painted with white powder, and powerfully-faced dragons decorating the pillars. But we weren’t allowed in. Admission into the Honsha central shrine of Tōshōgū was once strictly limited to feudal lords and upper class retainers in the Edo period, and still now only to national guests during major celebrations. But today was crowded with patrons of the Yayoi Spring Festival, and there was very dignified company outside the Honden main hall. Two Japanese rising sun flags hung from the gate. From the interior came a procession of Shinto priests in oversized shoes and separate red and blue and white robed entourages, holding what looked like large wooden tongue depressors to match the spring-loaded black shoehorns on the back of their pointed shiny Shinto hats, and carrying crenellated carmine umbrellas and a shrine with a chrysanthemum logo. Nuns clutching small sticks of tinkling brass bells followed behind, filing past old men in flower-lapelled black suits, military uniforms, other dignitaries with bodyguards, and us.